Tuesday 7 October 2014

Impossible Duty

To say nothing in this first quatrain
 That nothing in the second explain
so our Secretary be, not pi, e 
  Euler! sine i my refrain


Shiv Kumar, thy extremest unction
So scrupulous tho' the Saqi pours
As Gelassenheit yet overflows


Envoi-
Prince! Kajdar-o-marez means the impossible Duty
To so tilt the flagon naught flow but Beauty.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What does 'sine i' signify? Do you mean sinh i which is approximately 0.84? What is the numerological significance?
Alternatively, were you just plugging i into the generalization of the sine function which is sin x= e*ix− e*−ix)/ 2i. (where * is 'to the power of). Substituting i for x we get 0/2i which is undefined. However, obviously, that's a strange thing to do. Perhaps you read this on Math Stackxchange- 'Clearly, when x is complex it cannot be interpreted geometrically as an angle; however, generalized in this way, sin x becomes a holomorphic function, which is nice for a variety of other reasons. Practically, "imaginary angles" have some applications in physics. For instance, in optics, when a light ray hits a surface such as glass, Snell's law tells you the angle of the refracted beam, Fresnel's equations tell you the amplitudes of reflected and transmitted waves at an interface in terms of that angle. If the incidence angle is very oblique when traveling from glass into air, there will be no refracted beam: the phenomenon is called total internal reflection. However, if you try to solve for the angle using Snell's law, you will get an imaginary angle. Plugging this into the Fresnel equations gives you the 100% reflectance observed in practice, along with an exponentially decaying "beam" that travels a slight distance into the air. This is called the evanescent wave and is important for various applications in optics.'
Since evanescent wave solutions to Schrodinger's equation give rise to quantum tunnelling, I thought maybe that was what you were getting at.
Still, if you don't mind my saying so, the whole thing is a bit illiterate.



Anonymous said...

Sorry, obviously I meant to write 0/2i isn't undefined, it is zero. I just thought you might have got confused.
More generally, I notice you use a lot of Mathematical sounding language on your blog. Do you actually know any Maths at all, or- like your Urdu- are you just pretending?
If so, why?
You are clearly mentally ill but why does your illness take the form of pretending to know about stuff you clearly have never studied?
I'm not trying to put you down. It's just, maybe, you yourself would be better off thinking about the answer to this question instead of abusively trolling worthwhile sites.
Jus' sayin'.

windwheel said...

Wow! Thanks for this! I'm in shock. I want to think about the points you've raised and write a considered response when I aint drinking.
For the moment, I'll briefly explain the 'maths' in the poem. I'm thinking of a non-standard Dynamic Programming type Math in which negative probability/complexity arises to show the information set has changed- even impredicatively. Dunno if you saw my most recent post- which is just a long quotation from Hamming?- anyway, I may be as thick as shit but I did do A level Math and two years of Math Econ at the LSE. I fear not sinh but the cosh.
I am referencing the Secretary problem- which in a previous post, I linked to Ackermann Reflection and Godel- so, in the third line coz 'when any two are gathered' there is this fractal third. The Euler reference is a bit deeper but perhaps you can work it out for yourself?
Evanescent waves and quantum tunnelling is something you have added to this poem- but then, it seems to me, you're read it, and that is your entitlement. I would like to write to you about this, if you'd care to contact me.
Look, I'm as stupid as shit and don't know anything- let alone Math or Urdu or whatever. But, I'm not a 'troll on worthwhile sites'. Trolls live under bridges. A worthwhile site is a bridge. You don't see the troll's ugly face in the comments section of that sort of site. However, you will see my deeply ugly and trollish features on sites which claim to be bridges but are actually meretricious Blackpool piers filled with booths to scam you out of your money or corrupt your morals. Why?
Ugly, stupid, uneducated troll that I am, I'd have sought refuge under what was advertised as a bridge, but Ignorance is a giant so, yes, you do see my ugly face at the end of that insalubrious and unsafe pier.
I don't speak Urdu- Urdu speaks to me, coz the Saints and Pirs who created that language did so only to offer 'peer support' to the mentally or morally but also materially ill, abandoned, or just sheer shit out of luck.
Mathematical language is poetical because Maths has open problems. 'Literature' doesn't- just festering fucking prejudices.
Thanks for your comment.
God bless.

windwheel said...

Sorry, wanted to add, if your Urdu is as good as your Math, why not leave more such comments on my Ghalib posts?
Jus' askin'.